Farming Bullets
by NatashaKayy
Summary: Being best friends with Jeff was never easy. Like tolerating and keeping up with his ever-changing hobbies, for one. This time, through the World Wide Web, Jeff purchased something online so absurd that poor Nick has to comply. But what happens if one of their little pets were to escape? What exactly did Jeff buy from Nicaragua, anyway? Niff friendship. One shot, R&R!


**Disclaimer: I do not own Glee or any of its characters.**

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"This the West Wing?" A burly man in a FedEx cap gruffly asked me. He held a blue clipboard in a hand while sporting two packages underneath his other arm. I nodded at him. "Here, you can sign it," he grunted, thrusting the clipboard in my face. How rude.

I signed on the dotted line and passed the board back to the guy, exchanging it with the packages. The one on top tethered precariously, its contents – glass, I presumed – clinking against each other inside. I glanced at the box on top. "It doesn't say what's in here," I pointed out to the guy after scanning the slip of paper taped on the brown paper. "Jeff Sterling; I should've known," I muttered under my breath upon reading the receiver's name.

"Yeah, well, disclosed delivery, isn't it? I'm outta here."

I stared after the delivery guy walking down the steps, grimacing in disgust when he scratched his butt before he rounded the corner. I had to sanitize my hands later, I thought as I walked up two floors to my shared dorm room with Jeff. These boxes were _heavy_.

"Here, these came for you just now," I announced as soon as I got in the room. His guitars were on his bed, but he was sitting cross-legged on the couch, tuning the strings of his favourite bass. He looked up when I walked into the room. "Feet off the leather, Sterling," I warned him, and he quickly dropped his feet. The couch cost me $650 – I was still waiting for Jeff to pay his half.

"They're here!" he cried in excitement, carefully depositing the bass on its stand and running over to me.

Knowing the smaller of the two packages held glass, I lifted the bigger one to toss to him. "Catch."

"Whoa, whoa, _whoa_! Don't you _dare_!" he cried, snatching the heavy package from my hand. "You'll kill them!"

I rolled my eyes at him before setting the smaller package on his bed. "What are they anyway? And I take it's something living if you said I'd kill them?" I honestly didn't want to know which hobby he had decided to pick up this week – last week was conquering as many levels of Pokémon on the old Nintendo from the 90s – but I was curious, too. "Can I open this one?"

"Go ahead," he nodded. He was already stringing up the last string on the last acoustic. "I'll just finish this up, then you can help me set up," he mumbled. "And make sure the glass isn't cracked or anything; I don't want to die in my sleep."

Jeff confuses me most of the time with his words; I cannot understand half the things he says sometimes. His mumblings were either incoherent or like most of the time, doesn't make much sense to me or anyone else, for that matter. It's sort of like his mind is twisted and warped, but that doesn't say much about me, either.

Maybe that was why the both of us got along so well.

I tore through the layers brown construction paper. "What the hell is this?" I demanded as I held up the large but narrow glass structure to the light. Crafted wood supported the structure, and it was heavier than it looked – and there was two of it. "Is this what I think it is?" Jeff wasn't serious about this, was he? I knew it was easy to care for and all, but surely he's not planning for –

"Yep, I'm building an ant farm!" he quipped cheerily with a massive grin on his face as he coiled up the excess strings. The guitars were back on their stands by his desk. "And not just _any_ ants," he added. I didn't like the sound of that. "_Bullet_ ants."

I gaped at him. "You cannot be serious. What kind of name for ants is that?" I was well aware that my voice had a nervous edge to it – the name itself sounded dangerous.

He nodded, this time with a suggestive grin. "I'm completely for real, Nick," he said. His tone of voice made me think of the happy thoughts a serial killer would think of when he had a new victim putty in his hands; it was that creepy.

Jeff Sterling scares the shit out of me sometimes.

"You need your brain checked."

"And you need to live a little."

I watched him tear through the other package, producing a bag of packed soil, a jar of what looked like gel, some tools to catch the ants, and finally, a large black jar.

Or so it seemed black until Jeff shook it. Then the contents starting moving.

"Holy sh –" I started the same time Jeff cooed to the jar: "Aww, look at that; they're tired from the flight."

""Flight"?" I parroted my friend.

He held up the jar to me. "Behold, my friend. One hundred and fifty bullet ants swarm this jar, all the way from Nicaragua, all about one inch long, give or take," he informed me gaily. There was pride in his voice, quite similar to parents' pride towards their children; it scares me most of the time, too. Jeff then squinted into the jar, bringing it closer to his face as he tapped the glass with a finger. He muttered, "The queens must be in there somewhere; they promised me two queens."

I cleared my throat. There were _two_ royalties in there?

His head popped out from behind the jar that seemed to eat up his face. "You know _why_ bullet ants, Nick?" The creepy smile was back on his face again.

"Because garden ants are too common?" I offered. I knew Jeff was the type of person who didn't conform to the norms of society; he liked to stand out, be the odd one out, the rose among daisies (not that _all_ Daltonites were daisies). "Because they're bigger than normal ants?"

"Do you know why they're called bullet ants?"

"They're shaped like bullets?"

"Wrong."

"They're as hard as bullets?" Their exterior did look shiny. And shiny meant hard, right?

He tsked, shaking his head sadly. "Again, wrong, compadre. Bullet ants, because the level of pain inflicted to the victim is equivalent to a bullet to the human body. That, Nick, is why bullet ants," he told me, brandishing the jar of ants to my face again. I winced at the proximity of it, trying not to imagine the pain if I were to get stung by one of Jeff's 'pets'. "And that is only from the sting of _one_ ant, by the way," he casually added as an afterthought as he walked to his cupboard.

After placing the jar into the dark recesses of his cupboard, – I dread to think what else he was hiding in there – he walked back over to his desk where the materials for the ant farm were. He tore through the bag of soil and disappeared into our bathroom.

"You better not be lacing my toothbrush with that crap, Sterling!" I pounded on the door.

The door swung open. "I'm just wetting the soil a bit so that the ants can tunnel through, _Duval_," he said impassively. Just as soon as the door opened, it closed again, leaving me glaring at the grains of the wood.

I dashed over to my idle laptop and Googled those killer ants.

A Brazilian tribe used these ants as an _initiation_ rite for men to become warriors – to test the strengths of the men to see how much pain they can withstand, I suppose. According to the article, the tribesmen would weave the ants, stinger inwards, into special leaf sleeves – something like oven mitts – for the 'warriors' to put on after that. And there were _hundreds_ of said ants on one sleeve alone, mind you.

I shivered. Jeff had a hundred and fifty of those in a jar in his cupboard. That was equivalent to one hundred and fifty rounds of bullets into someone's body.

Oh, the pain lasts for twenty four hours for one sting. Brilliant.

Jeff burst out of the bathroom, a container of moist soil in his hands. "Done!" he announced. "Wanna help me with the farming?" He didn't wait for my answer. "Here, pass me their new homes." I bounced off my bed to help him, wondering why I was so compliant to my best friend.

"What would happen if one of them escapes the farm?" I mused aloud as we busied ourselves with lining the glass structures with the damp soil. Really, I wouldn't get a wink of sleep knowing one of these buggers is free in the room, stinger ready to attack. _I_ was a potential victim. And if it crawls out of our room and latch itself on some unsuspecting housemate? I shivered at the thought of involving anyone else in the house.

"Then we'd know about it," he shrugged his reply. He then poured a layer of the clear gel – "nutrients for the ants," he explained. "No need to trouble ourselves with food and drink for those creeps." – before adding the soil again over it.

I shuddered again.

"Oh, and apparently, the ants would shriek before attacking."

I sometimes worry about the sanity of my friend.

He brushed off his hands of dirt, smug. "Okay, bring out the ants, Nick," he ordered me.

"No way am I touching those –"

"– they're in a jar –"

"One might be lurking _outside_ the jar –"

"… it's tightly sealed with miniscule holes for oxygen, Nick," he coolly said, pushing me to the direction of his cupboard. "Stop being such a girl and get the jar."

The things I do. Slowly, I opened the cupboard door; so slowly that it creaked ominously. Said jar was sitting innocently on a shelf, the ants in a passive mode – nothing within moved, as if it was merely an empty jar lined with black ink. I grabbed it and shivered once more.

The whole jar was cool to the touch.

I brought it back to Jeff's desk where he was standing with a proud smirk on his face. "You touched it, Nick; good job," he praised. My eyebrows raised in reflex. "Okay, now open it."

I blanched. "_What_?" He wasn't serious! Those things would swarm me, and my nightmare of getting stung by one hundred and fifty of them at once would come true, and it was like one hundred and fifty rounds of bullet to my body, and –

"Read the manual and use the kit, you dolt." He hit me upside of the head. "Did you hear me asking you to use your bare hands? Do you have a death wish?" he scolded with a hiss.

"Jesus, calm down, Jeff," I muttered. "Why can't _you_ do it?" I asked him.

"You do this one and leave the other one to me."

"Then you do it first." I shoved the jar to him.

"Fine." He put on the thick rubber gloves that came with the kit, unscrewed the lid halfway, and reached for the tongs. Taking in a deep breath, he turned to me. "If anything goes awry, there's a fumigator somewhere in the pack," he said shakily. His eyes were wide, as if the danger of the ants was only dawning in on him.

He was telling me now? Is he insane? I could've gotten the pesticide ready in case of anything, and now I had to dig the half-unpacked box for it? I was too scared to speak, so I nodded, gulping.

The transferring process from the jar to the farm was terrifying. I had to keep the fumigator on standby mode and had almost freaked out on occasion when an ant or two would crawl up Jeff's glove, exploring but never stinging. On those occasions, I got the chance to take a closer look at the insect, and _damn_, those pincers were like the size of small wire clippers – it was huge! And not to mention the _screech_. I mean, Jeff did tell me about the sounds, but it wasn't like a one-off thing; it was long and piercing and _painful_ to the ears.

"Seventy-three… Seventy-four… Seventy-five!" Jeff huffed in satisfaction. He sealed the jar and banged it on the desk. The ants inside went frantic in the half empty space. "You got it easy, compadre; the rest is yours now." He patted me on the back. I supposed it was for encouragement.

"Did you – Did you put the queen in yours? 'Cause I wouldn't want her to fight with mine…"

Jeff nodded. "They're both marked, and I took the one marked blue," he told me. "The red one's yours."

"Okay, I'll just tip them –"

"Don't do that!" Jeff yelled. "What if a few were missing? 75-75 flat; no more, no less. Just in case, of course. If one was missing from yours, well, you can sleep with your eyes open looking out for the bugger, then."

"_What the bloody hell is that thing_?"

"_Kill it! Kill it with fire_!"

"_That thing is as huge as a hornet_!"

"_Step on it, David, for God's sakes, _step_ on that piece of shit_!"

Jeff and I looked at each other the same time we bolted for the door, almost wrenching it off its hinges.

A group of our housemates were standing in a circle, surrounding what seemed to be an empty floor space. The side coffee table was tipped on its side, the rug haphazardly draped over the couch where another two housemates were standing on it, staring at the empty floor space –

– which wasn't actually empty at all.

Right on the floor was an inch-long ant with pincers the size of wire clippers, its abdomen marked with a red dot.

"Fuck," Jeff and I muttered at the same time.

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**This little piece was inspired by an arthropod documentary I was watching on TV earlier this afternoon (time zones may differ). I've always imagined Jeff to be the cheeky type to own something as absurd as a bullet ant farm. Poor Nick is always compliant to Jeff.**

**I hope you enjoyed this!**

**Review, pretty please?**

**x, Kay.**


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